U.S. Pat. No. 5,890,855 describes a device for the transportation of at least two vehicles one above the other, consisting of a lower pallet and an upper pallet, a front pair of columns and a rear pair of columns that are attached to the lower pallet by clamps and that serve to fasten the upper pallet. It is possible to change the inclination of the upper pallet relative to the lower pallet by adjusting the corresponding columns. Moreover, the device can be taken apart in order to allow a space-saving transportation of the empty device. For this purpose, the upper pallet is disassembled from the columns, the columns are disassembled from the lower pallet and laid onto the lower pallet, and the upper pallet is laid onto the columns that are lying on the lower pallet. In order to load two vehicles in the device, first the upper pallet is raised at an angle from one of the ends and secured so that the first vehicle can be driven onto it. Accordingly, the upper pallet is lifted by of an industrial floor truck and secured at a height that depends on the height of the second vehicle, and at a certain angle that, depends on the shape and height of the vehicles, before the second vehicle can be driven onto it. Before the second vehicle is loaded, the height of the upper pallet is determined. Also, how inclined the upper pallet is in order for the second vehicle to fit in the device without being damaged. This loading procedure is laborious. Moreover, even though the construction is stable, it contains many parts, particularly the cross braces for the columns, which make the device heavy. For this reason, this device is not suitable for transportation by airfreight.
Nowadays, vehicles, particularly motor vehicles, are transported in large numbers, at times over long distances. In this process, the vehicles are protected against damage. This may be the case when the vehicles are valuable, for instance, race cars, old-timers, prototypes, exhibition vehicles or other rare automobiles. More and more often, such vehicles are being transported by airfreight, whereby the airline company charges the commissioning party on the basis of the transportation surface area at a given maximum height of the freight. When such vehicles are transported by ship or road, they are often transported in containers, so that they can be protected against damage and so as to reduce the loading work. The height of such containers is also limited. If the vehicles are transported by combined transportation modalities, for example, by train to the harbor or airport, from where they then travel by ship or airplane, they are normally moved by their own driving power onto and off of the transportation trailer and are subsequently driven to a transshipment site. From there, they are usually driven onto airplane pallets in the case of airfreight operations. For sea freight operations, they are either driven into the above-mentioned containers or else into roll-on/roll-off (RORO) vessels. The numerous engine starts used for this purpose and the subsequent short running times are undesired.
Containers of the above-mentioned type are known and standardized, for example, in ISO 668. These are so-called sea freight containers, available as 10-foot, 16-foot, 20-foot and 40-foot containers, which are suitable and used, for instance, for the transportation of motor vehicles. Such containers have a very sturdy construction which, however, translates into a high intrinsic weight. For this reason, such containers are not suitable for airfreight transportation.
P.C.T. Publication WO 96/26849 discloses a device for the transportation of motor vehicles that allows the motor vehicles to be transported one above the other, whereby the upper vehicles can be arranged at an angle above the lower vehicles. This makes it possible to minimize the total height of two motor vehicles that are to be transported one above the other. For this purpose, the device includes height-adjustable wheel carriers on which the wheels of the upper vehicle come to rest. Two of these wheel carriers are needed for each vehicle. The device has a removable or height-adjustable upper frame. The wheel carriers can be moved in a rail system axially with respect to the vehicle axle, so that they can be adjusted to different wheelbases of the vehicle to be transported, and the upper vehicles can be positioned beyond the lower vehicles so that individual vehicle axles can subsequently be lowered and the upper vehicles can be placed at an angle so that the recesses in the car body of the lower vehicles can be utilized, for example, for the trunk or above the engine hood, thus minimizing the total height of the two vehicles that are to be transported above each other. The system is permanently installed on a vehicle for the transportation of vehicles. Due to its intrinsic weight, it is not suitable for airfreight. If the transportation modality—rail, road, ship, aircraft—changes, the vehicles have to be unloaded and subsequently loaded onto the other transportation, in other words, the vehicles themselves have to be moved.
A similar system is disclosed in European patent application EP 0 274 882 A1. A system that is permanently installed on a truck trailer can lift vehicles onto wheel carriers that can be affixed at different heights and that themselves can be axially moved along the length of the trailer in the direction of the vehicle axis. This device entails the same drawbacks as the one mentioned above.
P.C.T. Publication WO 888/05001 proposes an intermodal container in which two vehicles can be transported above each other, whereby rails are affixed on the lengthwise sides of the inner walls of the container and wheel carriers run in these rails. The front and rear axles of a vehicle can stand in the wheel carriers at different heights, as a result of which the vehicle can likewise be placed at an angle, so that the recesses in the car body of the lower vehicles can be utilized for example, for the trunk or above the engine hood, thus minimizing the total height of the two vehicles that are to be transported above each other. Even though this system allows intermodal use, it is not useful at least for airfreight because of its intrinsic weight.
All of the devices known from the state of the art also have the disadvantage that they use the same transportation volume regardless of whether they are loaded or not.